Okay, I’ve been hoping someone would pick up on this, but no one has, and it seems to be blowing up.

Rick Santorum’s wife did not have an abortion: she had a miscarriage in 1996. There was a whole story for a while about the two of them taking the fetus (they had a hospital form changed to read “baby”), Gabriel Michael, home with them, showing him to their children, and kissing and cuddling him before (I assume) laying him to rest. His wife wrote a book of letters to her late son, called Letters to Gabriel.

This doesn’t diminish the awfulness of Santorum. What he experienced was tragic; however, he and his family got the chance to say goodbye to their intact son. They had the option of abortion and did not choose it. That was their right. If they had chosen to end their son’s suffering earlier, they also had that right, as they should have.